An aroma sweet like passion fruit custard.
Appearance twisted, crocodile skin green. Two leaves and a bud attached to a twig. Unfurl, gently, in water not so hot. The steam rises with bouquets of asparagus. They find your lips, those bouquets, and you wonder if you are not drinking a Camellia Sinensis but a Asparagus officinalis broth.
Minerality follows, slight but rounds the flavor out nicely. Cleansing mouthfeel with a bit of astringency in the aftertaste. This oolong has a much lower oxidation level then most.
Mr. He, tea master, has produced this tea to have almost the same percentage of oxidation that a Bilouchun does according to their special note included with the box.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Description:
This tea is the He Family’s answer to the challenge that oolong is only for southern China. Despite Laoshan Village only having fifty years of tea cultivation and oolong being the most technically demanding kind of tea in the world to produce, Mr. He comes through brilliantly. The careful kneading and rolling brings out a beautiful, pure expression of the minerality of the soil and the water. This tea is processed without a roast for a true green flavor of Laoshan.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
2018 Autumn Laoshan Pine Needle Green / Verdant Tea
Laoshan.
A mountainous area on the east side of China. South east of Beijing and due north of Shanghai.
My appreciation for Chinese and Japanese tea is higher than that of others after visiting both countries. What I acknowledge more than anything now though is a family tea farm, such as the He family that grows, harvests, and processes this tea.
Flavors of vegetal, sweet grass, almost a lettuce type of flavor are heavy on the palette. It finishes with an interesting sweet note. They reference a light herbaceous cooling in the aftertaste in the letter that came with the tea box.
I wish I could explain this to you but it literally has a cooling feeling with a flavor of a bunch of mixed herbs.
Also worth a mention is the dry smell and look. Called Pine Needle green because it resembles a pine needle. The leaves they use require plumper leaves due to the process this tea goes through to receive the pine needle look.
They require a bit more work than other green teas. The smell, though fleeting, was an intense waft of vegetal and grassy bliss. If you enjoy green teas I highly suggest giving this one a try.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Green
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Description
This innovative tea is first carefully curled before being pulled straight – all by hand. The result is a delicate, nuanced, and flavorful brew that lasts through multiple steepings. He Qingqing loves the way the leaves dance in a glass pitcher for brewing and the way that the hand finishing shows off Laoshan’s delicate deep-green buds and leaves at a glance. This tea is fed by mountain spring water, picked by hand, and cultivated sustainably using traditional chemical-free farming techniques including growing rows of soybean between rows of tea to restore nitrates to the soil. The extreme northern climate means cold winters and short growing seasons, but the He Family perseveres, protecting their tea in greenhouses over the winter. The result is a deeply sweet and delicate green tea unlike any other in the world. This year’s harvest is particularly notable for the deep minerality that shows off Laoshan’s rocky soil.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Autumn Reserve Tieguanyin/Verdant Tea . . . . . .
Not gonna lie to you, Sisters: these past few weeks have been QUITE STRESSFUL for me. So I’ve been in Treat Yo’self mode: cookies. cheese. trashy pop music. trips to the zoo. leisurely walks on the treadmill instead of strenuous weight lifting.
And tea. ALWAYS TEA.
Today I decided to try one of the samples I’ve been looking forward to: Autumn Tieguanyin from Verdant Tea. Oolongs are my current favorite, and frankly, I deserve fineries.
This tea is a creamy walk through a spring meadow filled with fluttering buttercups. It’s so light and dainty. If it were an garment, it would be a pastel mint-colored tutu. If it were a voice, it’d be Ingrid Michaelson’s.
The tasting notes I’m picking up are mostly flowery, sweet vegetal, and slightly creamy. The description on Verdant Tea’s site says “pound cake,” which I’m not sure I’m getting. This may be, in part, due to my profound unclassiness. I may not have enough fae in my blood to be able to pick up on everything. But I’m getting the idea, and I’m adoring it.
Want to Know More About This Tea?
Leaf Type: Oolong
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Description
Master Zhang has worked for over four decades continuing his family’s craft growing true Tieguanyin varietal tea high above Daping village in Anxi. He is working to bring back the original habitat of the region by clearing mountainsides and planting trees, bringing back wildlife and biodiversity, for better tea and a better future. He has won awards across China and has been recognized as one of the leading teachers and craftsman in Anxi for his unique approach to grading teas and processing for flavor. Instead of grading solely by elevation or tree age, Master Zhang holds the “Reserve” designation for the few teas that meet his strict criteria of lingering intensive aftertaste, pervasive sweetness, and thick creamy body. This means that only the leaves whose weather, position in the field and processing come together perfectly can be offered as Master Zhang’s reserve. This reserve grade Tieguanyin was hand-picked and hand finished with an exhaustive fluffing and turning process to bring out deep intense florals and creamy texture.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
Notes on 2018 Autumn Laoshan Gongfu Black / Verdant Tea. . .
After three or four time of doing this, all within 2-3 minutes of steep time, I have realized my taste buds aren’t equipped to pick up all the subtle nuances of this tea.
There appears to be some malt and some interesting fruity undertones.
Maybe its because of this head cold? I’m not stuffed up but just feel a bit off.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Description
This tea highlights Mr. He’s delicate and meticulous hand rolling and straightening technique developed in producing Pine Needle Green, but introducing traditional sun-oxidation to make a rich and deeply complex black tea. The result is Lashan’s most mineral-forward and complex black tea to date. This tea is fed by mountain spring water, picked by hand, and cultivated sustainably using traditional chemical-free farming techniques including growing rows of soybean between rows of tea to restore nitrates to the soil. The finished tea picks up the rocky minerality of the soil, and careful low temperature roasting brings out deep brown sugar sweetness.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!
2017 Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong from Verdant Tea. . .
The Backstreet Boys have a song on an early album that went, “If you wanna get it good, girl, get yourself a bad boy.” This is pretty rich coming from the Backstreet Boys, obviously, but one cannot deny the appeal of a bad boy. Cigarettes, leather, motorcycles, hard liquor, and a devil-may-care attitude.
In my teas (and in my real life), I tend toward the “good boy”: straight or sweetly-flavored teas. But every once in a while, the bad boy winks at me — and I see, for a moment, what all the other girls are gushing about.
This lapsang souchong is a trouble-maker. It’s smoky and rich and dark and mineral. Its flavor is “natural and subtle addition that came from drying the leaves in a wok heated by pine wood. The smoke from the pine wood naturally mixed with the tea, creating a deeper and more foresty flavor that accentuated the tea’s minerality.”
If you’d like to see that drying room in action (you know you do), you should go to the listing for the tea.
Although this tea isn’t my “type,” I totally see its appeal for other people, and think that, if you want to try a rich new lapsang souchong, this might be the one for you. It’s a wild, satisfying ride.
Here’s the scoop!
Leaf Type: Black
Where to Buy: Verdant Tea
Description
The earliest Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong, (or Lapsang Souchong as it is commonly referred to in the West) was never deep-smoked. The smokiness was a natural and subtle addition that came from drying the leaves in a wok heated by pine wood. The smoke from the pine wood naturally mixed with the tea, creating a deeper and more foresty flavor that accentuated the tea’s minerality. The Li Family preserves this old-school aesthetic with careful application of smoke from local resinous pine. The sweet, roasted quality of the smoke processing blends with the rich flavor of the tea to yield a dark fruity flavor, and bring front and center the mineral texture of the soil of Wuyi.
Learn even more about this tea and tea company here!